January 2011
We hosted a river themed eco-arts workshop with Year's 1 and 5 at Sheringdale Primary School in Southfields, London, in keeping with the school's current topic.
Starting the morning off with Year 1, we explained to the class how disposable plastic in local rivers not only harms wildlife living along it but eventually ends up in the oceans damaging a whole host of marine life there too.
The children knew lots about reducing, reusing and recycling their plastic waste and were keen to reuse some of the plastic they had brought along to make art.Stephanie handed out some images of wildlife found along the river as well as some photographs of marine creatures.
They carefully copied their chosen animal onto their plastic bottle before decorating it with bright colours. Some children even made 3D sculptures
including a pink octopus and a giant crab!
Mrs Wendy (Head of Art) explained how the school intended to make a giant display from the artwork and link it to the theme of the River Wandle.
The Wandle Trust
The afternoon session was spent working with Year 5 and we were delighted to be joined by Erica Evans from The Wandle Trust.
Erica gave a brilliant talk about the history of the river and the changes that have occured over time. She highlighted that despite the River Wandle being cleaner than it was in the past, a lot of work still needs to be done to improve the conditions for both wildlife and people.
Following the talk Edwina showed the class how to make 3D sculptures of local wildlife including brown trout, mayflies and frogs. The children did a fantastic job and were really creative, paying extra attention to detail and making beautiful sculptures.
The day was a great success and the children learnt a lot:
"Today was really fun, we learnt about the history of the Wandle and how to make frogs out of plastic." - Willow, year 5
"I have learnd that you can reuse plastic to make cool art." - Mooney, year 5
Sheringdale Primary School
